


Insufficient Appreciation

by Roselightfairy



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Awkwardness, Cultural Differences, Dancing, Erebor, M/M, Mirkwood, Music, Rivendell | Imladris, Strangers to Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29120058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: The silence stretched to an excruciating length before finally Gimli broke it with an awkward, “Good evening.”“And to you,” Legolas said.  Pleasantries it was, then – though there was an element of relief, a slight unclenching, in the thought that Gimli at least did not seem to want a fight.  “Are you also” – he waved a hand in a nonspecific gesture – “taking in the evening air?”“I suppose.”  Gimli glanced behind him at the doors.  “I am sure the music is lovely, for those who can understand the tongue, but it is not quite” – He hesitated.“To your taste?” Legolas supplied.The music in Rivendell is very different from music in Erebor or Mirkwood. Gimli and Legolas have their first - but not their last - moment of bonding.
Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin) & Legolas Greenleaf, Gimli (Son of Glóin)/Legolas Greenleaf
Comments: 28
Kudos: 123





	Insufficient Appreciation

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by [this hilarious post](https://avantegarda.tumblr.com/post/187738683062/folk-music-of-middle-earth-third-age-edition) about folk songs for different kingdoms, and a subsequent conversation with DeHeerKonijn about Legolas and Gimli reluctantly bonding over hating Rivendell's music. (No offense to Rivendell is meant in the writing of this story; they were just a convenient butt of the joke!) My thoughts about Mirkwood and Erebor music are - in part, though not entirely - inspired by notanightlight's [The Sound Between the Rests](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3196811).
> 
> Also, Mirkwood drum solos are a thing. I have decided it and so it shall be.

In the back of Rivendell’s great Hall of Fire, listening to a long droning lament in a language he did not speak, Gimli hid a yawn behind his hand.

He sat up straight immediately after, glancing around as covertly as he could to ensure he had not been caught. Beside him, his father sat with his eyes closed, swaying back and forth, but he was not asleep – and, Gimli thought sourly, he would surely be forgiven if he were, on the basis of his age. But no, it had been Glóin who insisted they come to listen to the songs and recitations. He _enjoyed_ this music, for all its sluggish melodies and repetitive phrases. And he was so intent on showing their hosts the proper respect for their hospitality that he had insisted Gimli accompany him.

In the center of the hall, the harpsichord struck another low, mournful note.

Gimli glanced around the hall, seeking amusement as discreetly as he could in the other listeners. Bilbo Baggins, seated on his father’s other side, _was_ nodding – but that could be forgiven; the hobbit was astonishingly old for one of his kind, after all. Gimli, as a hearty dwarf in his prime, had no excuse for such behavior.

Across the hall, seated in a cluster at the base of a vast carven column, some of the elves were weeping. Evidently, this song was quite sad – or perhaps they were merely overcome with emotion; it seemed that was a common reaction among elfkind. Gimli suppressed another yawn, trying to force an expression of appropriate gravity onto his face.

A flicker of motion caught at the corner of his eye and he wrenched his head around in surprise. Someone had risen from his seat – another elf, slipping through the masses with a predator’s grace so different from the stately glide of their elven hosts – and was making his way back down the hall. Someone familiar.

Following was beneath him, Gimli knew that. But this was the one excuse his father might allow him to leave the hall.

“Adad,” he murmured. “Thranduil’s son has slipped away. I mean to follow him and see where he is going.”

He felt only the slightest twinge of guilt at using his father’s past in such a way, but it was assuaged when Glóin opened his eyes (clear and sharp enough to belie his lulled appearance) and followed his gaze. “Go,” he said in an undertone. “You will be traveling with him, after all – best you know as much about him as you can now, so you will be on your guard.”

“Of course.” Gimli dipped his head before rising as quietly as he could and slipping through the throng himself.

He would not follow the elf for long – only long enough for a rest from this interminable recital.

* * *

The Hall of Fire was longer when slipping away than it had seemed in his arrival – Legolas felt small and exposed in the center of the vast expanse, but he resisted the urge to cast glances back, lest he look guiltier than he felt and draw more attention to his departure. He did not like to be discourteous – he had visited few enough foreign dignitaries not to be certain what was the most egregious breach of diplomacy – but he liked even less the thought of staying and listening any longer.

The wide archways of the hall bordered windows that gave a tantalizing display of the peaceful night sky, but Legolas could not find a door until he had reached nearly the end of this hall and back into the place where they had eaten. But then – there it was at last, instead of a window: a wide set of double doors, carved with delicate symbols that Legolas did not recognize, that could only lead outside.

He let out a sigh of relief when he was released into the evening air, the doors falling closed behind him and muffling the sound of the music in the hall. If the word _music_ could even be applied to a melody that moved so little, that relied so heavily on the words to tell its story! Legolas would describe it rather as a recitation – long and laden with grief – which would have been vexing enough, were it not that the elves of Rivendell evidently remembered certain tales of bygone ages very differently than did the folk of the Greenwood.

It was a shame, truly, for the Hall of Fire was grand in itself and the music did resound beautifully off the walls. Legolas would have enjoyed listening to Greenwood music with that resonant echo, attempting to adapt Silvan dances for the expansive space and polished stone floor.

He shook his head. What a waste.

A sound interrupted his musings – the sound of solid footsteps on stone, and then the doors swinging open once more. He started and whirled around – had he been caught? – but it was not Elrond or any of the Rivendell lords who emerged from the hall, but a dwarf. Gimli, son of Glóin who had once been prisoner in the Greenwood, and one of Legolas’s future traveling companions. The dwarf froze even as Legolas did the same, and for a moment they stared at one another.

Legolas felt himself flushing, though neither had spoken yet. The dwarf too looked a little guilty, as though he had been caught doing something he should not, and Legolas fumbled for something to say. Asking him what he was doing might come off too hostile, but all the pleasantries he could think of seemed bland and insufficient in the face of their families’ history – a history that was still all too present in the dwarves’ memories. He remembered Glóin’s words in Elrond’s council – “you were less tender to me” – and his face grew hotter still.

The silence stretched to an excruciating length before finally Gimli broke it with an awkward, “Good evening.”

“And to you,” Legolas said. Pleasantries it was, then – though there was an element of relief, a slight unclenching, in the thought that Gimli at least did not seem to want a fight. “Are you also” – he waved a hand in a nonspecific gesture – “taking in the evening air?”

“I suppose.” Gimli glanced behind him at the doors. “I am sure the music is lovely, for those who can understand the tongue, but it is not quite” – He hesitated.

“To your taste?” Legolas supplied.

Gimli shuffled his feet. “Perhaps I am merely too accustomed to the music of my own people.”

“And I to mine,” said Legolas. He almost laughed at the relief that he was not – it seemed – the only guest to be dissatisfied with the entertainment on offer. “Knowledge of the language does not make up for that.”

“I suppose not,” said Gimli. “It is a bit – slow.”

Legolas closed his lips on a less-generous assessment of the music’s merits and nodded instead. “And the harmonies leave something to be desired, I find.”

“Something, or many things,” Gimli agreed. “It is a shame the hall is so perfectly built for resonance. And so spacious; it would be perfect for dancing” –

“If you could dance to the music at all!” they burst out at the same time. Their eyes met in a shared guilty glance, and then they both dissolved into reluctant laughter.

“Well,” Legolas said. “If I am a poor guest for insufficient appreciation of my host’s entertainment, I am glad I am not the only poor guest here.”

“As am I,” said Gimli. He sighed and gave the doors a chagrined glance. “But my father does fuss about proper etiquette to hosts, and he will be waiting for me to return.”

“Ah,” said Legolas stiffly. Gimli’s father – yes. He could imagine that Glóin would have very particular opinions about hosts and guests.

They exchanged another speaking glance in which the entirety of that history passed between them. Abruptly, the moment of camaraderie was gone, and the discomfort was back. “Yes,” said Gimli. “I had best return to him now.”

“I suppose so,” said Legolas softly. “I wish you the best of luck staying awake.”

He clamped his mouth shut after those last words, hoping he had not overstepped – but the rigid set of Gimli’s shoulders relaxed for a moment as he chuckled. “It will be a trying task indeed,” he said, “but I am sure I am equal to it.” And without another word he turned away, bracing his shoulder against a door to push it open.

For just one wild moment, Legolas considered following him inside – but the strains of harpsichord music filtered through the crack in the door as Gimli opened it, holding him back for a few crucial seconds. In the time it took for him to decide, his courage faded away and left him to watch as the dwarf disappeared from his sight.

* * *

The music in Mirkwood was very different from that of Rivendell.

Gimli understood immediately why Legolas had complained of the lackluster harmonies in the Rivendell lays – the musicians here used notes he had never heard before, notes a tilt closer to one another than the scales he was familiar with, giving the sound a haunting undertone that should have clashed but instead drew him in deeper. Made up of overlapping melodies, the music never stopped moving, a new line swelling up from beneath each long held note.

Nor was the music played on grand stately instruments like the harps in Rivendell (or in Erebor), but rather on horns and wooden flutes, and on drums – ah, the drums. The rhythm was never the same even within a single song, changing up – it seemed – at the whim of the drummers, who would frequently let loose wild and spontaneous demonstrations of skill that without fail elicited a chorus of cheers and yelps from the listening elves. Like their music, those elves were never quiet and still – they whooped and whistled and sang along from the clearing and from the trees, falling into dance routines that seemed half-practiced and half-invented on the spot.

Even as Gimli watched, Legolas excused himself from a knot of those dancers and bounded back to his side, his eyes shining and his breath coming fast. “Well?” he said. “Does it please you?”

“It is everything you promised, of course,” said Gimli, taking his hands. They were very warm and his pulse beat fast in his wrist; Gimli could practically feel the energy thrumming beneath his skin. “I have never heard the like before, but it seems to me I have been the poorer for the lack.”

“Then you will not be slipping away quietly in the hopes of not offending your hosts?” said Legolas hopefully.

“No indeed,” Gimli laughed. “Though now I am even more eager to introduce you to my own people’s music.”

“The time for that will come soon enough,” Legolas promised. “For now, dance with me?”

He tugged on Gimli’s hands and Gimli let himself be drawn to his feet. “As long as you will forgive me for not knowing any of your dances,” he warned.

Legolas jerked his head, brushing that thought away like an unwelcome insect. “That matters not a whit,” he said. “Come, we will make it up for ourselves.”

* * *

Now, the dwarves of Erebor knew how to fill a space with sound.

Here, Legolas thought, was a glorious music hall used to full effect – the architecture was almost an instrument in itself, with angles cut into the walls themselves that reflected and amplified particular sounds, the strains of the fiddles holding their own even among the louder horns and reaching to the farthest corners of the hall. The dwarves used each instrument to its best effect, rather than as a droning background for a long tale; the hall was alive with it – and with the stomping and clapping of the exuberant dancers filling the space. And it was nearly impossible to stay still amidst such music; Legolas could feel it pulsing in his blood, urging him to get up and _move_.

Music in Erebor was what music in Rivendell ought to be.

He and Gimli were seated for the moment, catching their breath after a lively dance – and yet, he knew he could not stay seated for long. Even as he thought that, Gimli started beside him at the sound of the next song. “Oh – this is one of my favorites,” he said, catching Legolas’s hand. “Shall we dance again?”

“Of course!” said Legolas.

He could not be sure if it was Gimli’s tug on his hand or the music in his blood that pulled him to his feet and swept him into the whirlwind of the dance floor – but either way, he went gladly.


End file.
